Santa Maria (Bulacan) - Santa Maria 6.4

Santa Maria, officially known as the Municipality of Santa Maria is a first class highly urbanized municipality in the province of Bulacan, Philippines. According to the, it has a population of people representing 7.8% of the population of the province.Located on the banks of the Santa Maria River, 32km north of Manila, Santa Maria has been a thriving settlement for almost four centuries. It was founded as a barrio of Bocaue in the early 17th century until it was established as an independent municipality on November 26, 1793 by the Spanish friar Francisco Dominguez Javier OFM. Known before as Santa Maria de Pandi, it is named under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception . Its administrative center, the Poblacion, forms as the historic core of the municipality. It is surrounded by four rivers and it still largely retains its 2.88 square-kilometer boundaries since the Spanish Colonial Era.Santa Maria, with a population of 256,454, remains by a significant margin the most populous municipality in Central Luzon, as well as the 5th most populous municipality in the Philippines. Its downtown area, known as the Santa Maria Central Business District, consists of three highly urbanized barangays: Poblacion, Bagbaguin, and Santa Clara. It is one of the biggest and busiest commercial centers in the province as it accounts for more than half of all economic activities in the municipality. It is also one of Bulacan's leading financial centers. According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation, Santa Maria's total bank deposits reached PHP 18.8 billion as of March 2017, this accounts for almost 75% of Eastern Bulacan's total bank deposits. Likewise, Santa Maria is the richest municipality in Bulacan with an assets totaling to PHP 1 billion and revenues reaching an all-time high of PHP 560 million as of the 2016 report from the Commission on Audit . It has a relatively high standard of living, with only 4% of the population living in poverty which is one of the lowest in the country .